Aboriginal People in Manitoba 2000Chapter 1 : Demographics |
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Urban Distribution
Outside Winnipeg, no Manitoba urban area has an Aboriginal population of more than about 4,000 people. The following chart shows the Aboriginal populations of eight urban municipalities where Friendship Centres are located:7
Thompson and Brandon are the two centres with the greatest number of Status Indians residing within their municipal boundaries (2,460 and 1,790 respectively), followed by Portage la Prairie and The Pas. Status Indians make up about 17%of the population in Thompson, 15% in The Pas, 7% in Portage la Prairie, 6% in Selkirk, and between 4% and 5% in the other four centres. Interestingly, all of these centres have a higher proportion of Status Indians than Winnipeg (3.3%).
In total,7,400 Status Indians reside in these eight municipalities, where a further 6,090 people indicate Aboriginal identity but are not registered under the Indian Act. These are almost entirely Metis-identity people. Metis outnumber Status Indians in Selkirk, Dauphin, Flin Flon and Swan River.
A different view of the urban distribution of Aboriginal people outside Winnipeg is provided in the following chart. Here, adjacent communities comprising a single urban geographical and economic unit are combined – i.e. Morden and Winkler; The Pas, Opaskwayak Cree Nation and Consol LDG (Carrot Valley); and Powerview, Pine Falls and Fort Alexander. The 40,000 total population of Brandon is truncated in this chart to better show the Aboriginal population in smaller urban centres:8
| Populations above are for “towns ”except as follows: data for Thompson and Brandon are “Census agglomerations.” Data is available for Portage as a “Census metropolitan area,” but because this includes a very large rural area, city data have been used. Gillam, Lynn Lake and Churchill are given as “Local Government Districts (LDG ’s).” Data for Pine Falls and The Pas are combined with immediately adjacent areas as described above. |
From this perspective, the Aboriginal population in and around the Town of The Pas actually exceeds that in and around Thompson – 4,200 compared to 3,600 in raw numbers,and 42% compared to 25% as a proportion of the total population. The Aboriginal populations in these two centres are on a par with the larger reserve areas in the North, such as Island Lake, Norway House, Nelson House and Cross Lake. A number of other reserves also have larger Aboriginal populations than any urban areas in the north other than Thompson and The Pas.
In the south outside Winnipeg, Brandon has the largest urban Aboriginal population, at 2,885 or 7.2% of Brandon’s total population. The Aboriginal demographic in Brandon is similar to Winnipeg, except that Brandon has a higher relative proportion of Status Indians while Winnipeg has a higher proportion of Metis. Portage la Prairie and Selkirk are the next largest urban Aboriginal communities in the south, followed by the Pine Falls area and Dauphin.
Aboriginal people comprise 14% of the population in Portage la Prairie and 16% in Selkirk – much larger proportions than other southern urban centres. Quite a number of southern towns contain very few Aboriginal people: Morden/Winkler (110 or 0.8%), Steinbach (150 or 1.8%), Neepawa (50 or 1.6%), Minnedosa (35 or 1.5%), Carman (80 or 3%), Beausejour (40 or 1.5%), and so forth.
